Friday, January 3, 2014

Greenwich Writer and Cartoonist

What
better way to start the new year than with a blog post about a Greenwich
resident who has made a career of cartooning and writing? That would be none
other than Jerry Dumas, currently a columnist for Greenwich Time and a cartoonist, whose popular strip, “Sam and
Silo,” is distributed by King Features Syndicate. But before Greenwich, before
his illustrious career, he was—as he told our Oral History Project interviewer—a
kid growing up in Detroit, Michigan.

January 3rd, 2014, "Sam and Silo"

Writer, cartoonist, Jerry Dumas

And
“a good childhood,” it was, as Dumas says, surrounded by loving parents and an
interesting extended family, going back on the Dumas side to the early 1500’s
in Canada. On his mother’s side, his grandfather emigrated from Germany and became
a Lutheran pastor, riding the circuit in his horse and buggy among three
churches in the Ontario countryside. He wrote his Sunday sermons at the same
desk his grandson uses today. All of this, as Dumas explains, has been recorded
in his childhood memoir, An Afternoon in
Waterloo Park.

Dumas’
own mother and father met in Detroit. One night in 1924, his father, who was a
fireman and in training to become a prizefighter, was seriously injured in a
hit-and-run accident. Sadly, that event ended his career as a fire fighter and
his hopes for the ring, but his future bride (and Jerry Dumas’ mother) was his
nurse. Their son was born in 1930.

Dumas’
own career path was set in those early days in Detroit. After high school,
while he was working in a grocery story, he became fascinated by the cartoons
he saw in the magazines of the day. He particularly admired the work of John
Cullen Murphy, a cartoonist for Liberty.
Little did he know then, that Murphy, who lived in Cos Cob, would become one of
his closest friends for over fifty years. But Dumas’ life has been a succession
of life-altering coincidences.

In
1947 or ’48, as Dumas tells it, he came across a new cartoonist in the Saturday Evening Post and was instantly
drawn to his work. He began to learn from this new talent, to copy his style.
Then came the Korean War and Dumas signed up. He was shipped to Luke Air Fore
Base outside Phoenix, Arizona. There he first saw Beetle Bailey, by none other than Mort Walker, the cartoonist he so
admired. At the same time Dumas was now drawing cartoons for Air Force Times, using much of what he
had learned from Walker’s style.

From there, with the help of the G.I. Bill,
Dumas enrolled in Arizona State, and during his stay there, he began “inking” a
comic strip for Walt Ditzen—for fifty dollars a week—his first job getting paid
in the field that would become his passion and his life’s work. Soon after, he
met Jay Roberge, from Stratford Connecticut, who was working on the comic
strip, Brenda Starr. Little did Dumas
know at the time that this relationship would play such a critical role in his
life.

Over
time, however, Dumas lost track of Roberge, learning only that he had moved
back East. After a year or two, Dumas decided, rather quickly, it seems, that
he wanted to live in New York City. He then read an article on Mort Walker who was
still having great success with Beetle
Baily. From the article Dumas learned that Walker lived in a white colonial
in the Belle Haven section of Greenwich—and that his assistant was Jay Roberge.

After
the two reunited, Dumas learned that Roberge was preparing to start his own
strip and that Walker would soon need someone to replace him. And that
replacement turned out to be Dumas. Instead of moving to New York, Dumas was on
his way to a lifetime in Greenwich. But first there was the apartment in Port Chester,
a big airy place where he could write the Beetle
Bailey gags and draw cartoons for The
Saturday Evening Post. Eventually, though, he moved to Greenwich, in an
apartment on Greenwich Avenue, across the street from Mead’s stationary store.

So
far so good for Jerry Dumas, but there’s a very important part of his story
that has been left out until now: how he came to meet, fall in love with, and
marry the love of his life.

It
just so happened that while he was in Arizona, he had met and dated a lovely
woman with high cheek bones and warm brown eyes whose name was Gail. They had
gone out only a few times, but that was enough for him to announce to friends,
“I just met the girl I’m going to marry.” When he moved to Port Chester, he
sent her one letter with his new address, but he did not hear from her until
the day before he was set to move to Greenwich Then, out of the blue, she
called to say she was in the area. The life-altering coincidences continued—and
a New York City courtship began, culminating in a Phoenix wedding in June of
1958. The happy couple would head back to Connecticut to take up residence for
a time in that Greenwich Avenue apartment. Not long after, however, they both
fell in love with a little brick house in Havemeyer where they started their
family, but the family home for the long haul would be a larger one in Greenwich,
on Crown Lane, on four acres.

Now
with a wife and three growing boys, Dumas continued his work with Mort Walker
and with his own cartoons, selling to the best magazines, including many to The New Yorker, the ultimate prize for
any aspiring cartoonist.

These
days, a still very busy Dumas can be found at his grandfather’s desk writing
his column for Greenwich Time and his
cartoons for “Sam and Silo,”to say
nothing of attending to other interests, including his membership with a group called
the “Thursdays” because they meet on Thursdays.
And, as Dumas describes them, to say this is a group of high-powered,
witty, smart, creative types would be an understatement.

Jerry with his wife, Gail, their son, Tim, and granddaughter, Emilie

In
fact, there are so many engaging anecdotes in this fascinating interview, to
realize its true merits, you will have to read it in its entirety. And enjoy
it, you will.

The interview, “Jerry Dumas: His Career
in Cartooning and Writing,” is available through the Oral History Project,
Greenwich Library, Greenwich, Connecticut.